Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Is Finally Going to Rehab

Rob Ford is pretty crazy. Photo via Flickr user AshtonPal

Rob Ford has been generating the poor citizens of Toronto the worst kind of international headlines since the first reports emerged of his smoking crack cocaine on video last spring. But the large, insane politician who loves him some drugs has somehow managed to remain in office despite being stripped of most powers by an exasperated city council. In fact, Ford has been busy this spring running for re-election—until now.

Ford told columnist Joe Warmington from the Toronto Sun on Wednesday that he is "ready to take a break" and "get help" for his substance abuse after the paper confronted him with a recording from this past weekend that captures the mayor going on a drunken rant about his wife, Reneta, and re-election challenger Karen Stintz at a local bar.

“I’d like to fucking jam her [Stintz], but she doesn’t want … I can’t talk like this… I’m so sorry,” Ford reportedly says on the recording, later adding, "I’m so fucking sick of politics, dude. Look at my record."

Given everything he's survived so far, a salacious audio recording may not have been enough to send this shameless pol crawling into rehab. But compounding Ford's problems on Wednesday was yet another video recording of him (apparently) smoking crack, this one provided to theGlobe and Mail by a self-identified drug dealer. Recorded on Saturday morning, the video shows Ford "taking a drag from a long copper-coloured pipe, exhaling a cloud of smoke, his right arm convulsing."

Rob Ford holding what appears to be a crack pipe in the latest video. Photo courtesy of the Globe and Mail

Dennis Morris, Ford's lawyer, told the Globe and Mail that his boss was going to "take a break" before re-election—which is to say he's not necessarily gone for good. Horrified constituents will have to continue taking solace in the Raptors, the city's suddenly relevant professional basketball team, which defeated the Brooklyn Nets just as the news was breaking Wednesday evening. As for deflated Brooklyners who watched their team mount an incredible comeback before coming up just short, well, at least NYC Mayor Bill de Blasio doesn't smoke crack.

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